KARACHI: A large part of the city plunged into darkness on Tuesday when units of Bin Qasim Power Plant got tripped because of some ‘technical reasons’, disrupting the lives of millions of people.

The breakdown struck several neighbourhoods, particularly in the city’s south, east and central districts, enveloping homes and markets in darkness.

A spokesman for K-Electric attributed the power breakdown to a ‘technical fault’ that struck the Bin Qasim Power Plant at about 9.30pm, disrupting supply to some of its units.

Another official said that a 220KV transmission line of the power plant tripped after a conductor broke down.

K-Electric did not give any timeframe when their engineers would fully rectify the fault. “Our engineers are working and we expect the supply will soon restore. In fact some parts of the city have already got the circuit back,” the K-Electric spokesman said.

The Bin Qasim Power Plant is a major source of power supply to Karachi and considered to be nucleus to the energy lifeline of the city.

Officials did not give numbers, but sources estimated that dozens of grid stations and at least half of the 1,400 feeders died down because of the breakdown.

The outages affected a large number of areas in the city, including Steel Town, Gulshan-i-Hadeed, Malir, Lyari, Old City, Saddar, Clifton, Defence, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Federal B Area, Lines Area and Garden.

People in various localities faced hardship because of the widespread breakdown that caught them unawares, particularly at a time when Ramazan’s final days have begun and preparations for Eid are round the corner.

Some residents complained that power supplies in their areas had not been smooth for a few days and fluctuations and outages were causing them financial losses which were affordable when cheese went bad in a refrigerator but not acceptable when fridge itself broke down.

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2015

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